Am specifically asking for Rome! I’ve read they can be really good and help you skip lines and just generally have a more efficient experience, but honestly there is so much BS when researching I can’t tell.
I was going to mention TA forums. Not very user friends for searching, and you do have to suss out self promoters, but you can pretty easily get a few legit recs without too much pain.
I’ll re-post that food in rome is generally terrible and the tourist trap to decent restaurants is the worst in major European cities, so lower expectations
It certainly can be, but I also didn’t have much trouble finding good places to eat with Trip Advisor.
Tripadvisor ratings are completely fake. Glad you had success but i wouldn’t put any faith in them
I can tell you for Tel Aviv it’s a completely fake list. I mean these places exist and some are good, but most of the top 10 are just serviceable places that no foodie would ever rank at the top 10
You’d be much better served looking for bloggers you like that visited the area.
I feel like with ratings, in general it’s just best to sort by newest and disregard any 10/10 reviews with no comments and you should get a pretty good idea
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This was literally his job
Butler had once worked posting fake reviews of other restaurants at a rate of £10 per review, saying, “I’d look at the menu, pick something, and start lying.”
I am so tilted by the awful layout of the Trip Advisor site.
Separately, uh, lol hotels? The quality and size of Airbnb options is outrageously superior to hotels in the same price range. We got a very nice centrally located 2 bedroom apartment in Rome for the cost of a mid-range hotel.
@surf look at the list for Vegas, which is a place most of us visited:
#1 Edge Steakhouse (fine, dunno it, in Westgate casino)
#2 Sickies Garage Burgers & Brews (ya right)
#3 Fresca Italiana (hey, guess what, it’s in Westgate casino)
#4 Benihana (the defense rest. Oh it’s also in WESTGATE CASINO)
Oh, #7 is Senor Frogs Las Vegas
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If you look for a top rated restaurant in Vegas and go to Benihana followed by Senor Frogs I think you’re doing it wrong.
That applies to any rating system on the internet, they are still a useful tool. Just means that a high rating w/o some reviewers screaming “zomg this company is sketchy as fuck!” means “high likelihood of being at least pretty good” rather than “zomg definitely amazing.” Bothering to put a thumb on the scale w/ reviews probably even correlates w/ basic business competence and good customer service.
Again, if you actually look at the top lists from major cities they are laughably bad. I find tripadvisor completely useless. Since food is a huge part of any trip I make there’s zero chance i’ll take TA into consideration, except assuming that any place that is at the top and doesn’t correlate with other even half serious lists like Eater.com is going to be a trap.
YMMV of course and if it’s working out for you that’s great, it’s not like there’s an argument here.
Also I’m only talking about restaurants here. I think it’s better suited for hotel rating.
I’ve had success on TA for finding more niche spots. I found our honeymoon spot in Belize on there and it was GOAT level. You just have to weed through some of the more obvious bullshit.
just got my expedited passport back. took about 5 weeks. FYI for anyone who’s trying to book travel.
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i live close to canadian border and was thinking of getting Nexus instead of global entry. two years ago or so i thought it included precheck, but who knows. is that a good plan or not for flying and pre-check?
Rome is a great city to just walk around imo - then show up and get the guided tour at the Vatican, Forum, Coliseum, etc. Hop in a cab/Uber or take public transportation when you need to.
You might also ask your AirBnB hosts if they know anyone. I wouldn’t want to get a guide for a whole day off the internet that didn’t come with a reference.
If you’re going for a full week I’d recommend spending a couple nights in San Miguel de Allende, too (a 1.5 hr drive away). Fossilkid and I both prefer Guanajuato, but it’s kind of a rival thing in Mexico, where you’ll find people preferring the two cities almost split 50/50. San Miguel has a lot more arts, gringo services, etc. This turned me off from visiting until like my 30th trip to Mexico, literally, but having been a couple times now I can confirm it’s legit, and you can let your guard down more with kids since it’s smaller and less busy.
Guanajuato state has a ridiculously bad murder rate, but most of the crime is south of Celaya and Salamanca. North of those cities it’s typical Mexico.
Plenty of side/day trips you can do from these cities, especially San Miguel.
Also, I wouldn’t bother with a bus to GTO from BJX airport. A cab is like $25 straight to your hotel/airbnb.
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Got it, we’ll look into staying a few days in both cities.
We may have to tack on a few days at the end to Manzanillo to satisfy the sister in law.
Sigh. It sucks catering to weirdos would rather go to a beach than an ancient town in the arid foothills of central Mexico.
In seriousness, there are nonstop budget flights from QRO and BJX airports to the various beaches in Mexico.